by Parnell Hall
There’d been no fruit on the ground then. I wondered why there were none now. They had to fall sometime. If the hippos ate them all night, they had to fall during the day. I wanted to find one on the ground, see how heavy they actually were.
So I should have seen it first, but instead it was Alice, sucking in her breath and saying, “Oh, my god!”
I saw what she was looking at, and my face froze.
It was Daniel.
He was lying facedown under the tree. A large sausage fruit lay on the ground next to him.
The back of his head was caved in.
14
CRIME SCENE
THEY DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO handle the crime scene. I’m not a cop, so I don’t know how to handle them myself, but I’d been at enough of them to know that what they were doing wasn’t it.
First Mowangi rolled the body over and tried to revive him. Not that he had a prayer of doing so. Even with my limited medical training—none—I could tell that he’d been dead for hours.
Also, expert tracker that he was, Mowangi was tramping all over the place, obliterating whatever footprints there might have been in the dirt, and just generally making a hash of it.
He also whipped out a walkie-talkie I didn’t know he had, and minutes later one of the jeeps came crashing through the underbrush to complicate the picture. En route they had managed to snare John, Clemson, and the other party, so we had an absolute zoo at the crime scene.
Fortunately, Clemson took charge. Unfortunately, he refused to recognize the crime scene as a crime scene. He also refused to acknowledge that Daniel was dead, pinching him, slapping him, and doubtless calling him the most unspeakable names in dialect. None roused him. The promotion of Daniel’s apprentice was apparently permanent.
Clemson also picked up the sausage fruit, which answered the question of how heavy it was. From the effort it took, the answer was pretty damn heavy. I had no doubt it could have bashed in Daniel’s head. I just wasn’t sure it had done so.
Of course, Clemson was not the ultimate authority. The ranger was. Not Mowangi’s ranger, but John’s ranger, who’d gone with us the day before. Clemson declared him in charge, addressed him as Duke. I had to resist an urge to ask him if he was named after Duke Snider.
Needless to say, the violent demise of our young spotter had thrown our tour group into a state of consternation. Clemson seemed to be taking it in stride, but the rest of us weren’t. Of course a sausage fruit wasn’t an animal, so Clemson still had his perfect game going. Inappropriate Thought #768.
“We’ve had a little accident,” Clemson said.
Lolita’s mother was incensed. “A little accident? The boy is dead.”
“That is the unfortunate result. And that is why we don’t let you leave camp without a guide.”
“He is a guide,” Hells Angel #2 said. She sounded angry. I could imagine her ripping someone’s head off. That gave me a little pause on her amorous designation.
“I know,” Clemson said. “And he should have known better. It just goes to show you.” Exactly what it meant to show us, Clemson didn’t expand on. “Anyway, Phillip has filled in.”
Phillip seemed an appropriate name for a fill-in. Inappropriate Thought #769.
“We all feel sorry for the boy,” Clemson continued. “We’ll certainly have some sort of tribute, and I’ll be happy to take up a small collection for his family. For the time being, we’re scrapping the morning schedule. We’re all together, and we’ll stay together. It’s about time for our midmorning snack. We’ll find a spot and set up tea and coffee in the bush.”
“Midmorning snack,” Lolita’s mother wailed. “How can you think of eating?”
“For goodness sakes,” Hells Angel #1 said. “You think not eating’s going to help?”
“At any rate,” Clemson said, “let’s get away from here.”
No one objected to getting away from the sausage-fruit tree, crime scene or not.
Daniel’s body was loaded into the back of the jeep. Clemson took the driver aside to give him instructions.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at the body, what with Mowangi pouncing on him and trying to cudgel him back to life. So while they were making preparations to go, I managed to sneak around to the back of the jeep and take a peek under the blanket.
I sucked in my breath.
Daniel’s head wasn’t caved in as if hit with a blunt object. His wound was a jagged gash.
There was no way it had been made by a sausage fruit.
The jeep started up.
I dropped the blanket back in place and stepped away before anyone saw me.
We watched the jeep drive off, and left the clearing.
A five-minute walk through the brush brought us back to the river. The guides began setting out refreshments. Lolita’s mother declined any sustenance, but Alice and I accepted tea and took a cookie.
I drew her off to one side. “Daniel wasn’t hit with a sausage fruit,” I said. “His head was gashed open with a sharp object.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I just saw it.”
“No, you didn’t. The body’s gone.”
“I saw it just before it drove off. I wasn’t going to jump in front of the jeep and say, Stop! If I had, you’d have called me an idiot.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
“Alice.”
“Are you sure about this?’
“No. But there’s no way a sausage fruit could make a wound like that.”
“Then you are sure.”
“Okay, I’m sure.”
“How can you be sure?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again.
“You’re spilling your tea.”
I looked. My tea, unheeded, was sloshing out of the cup, perilously close to my pants leg.
“What are you going to do?” Alice said.
“I’ll try to hold the cup more steady.”
“Stanley.”
“Well, I’m not going to leap up and tell everyone I’m a private investigator and I think there’s been a murder.”
“I’m glad to hear it. So what will you do? Tell Clemson?”
“I’ll tell Duke.”
“Why not Clemson?”
“He won’t admit it wasn’t an accident. He doesn’t want his tour shut down for a murder investigation.”
“That’s not his choice.”
“It is until someone in authority tells him it isn’t.”
The tea had been handed out and people were conversing in small groups. Clemson was talking to John, who apparently was taking the loss of his spotter hard. Duke was standing off to the side. He appeared lost in thought.
I went over and said, “Excuse me.”
He looked up as if he couldn’t believe I was talking to him. I hadn’t heard him talk to anyone but John. I wondered if he spoke English.
“I need to talk to you about Daniel,” I said.
He looked at me, said nothing. I couldn’t tell if he understood me.
“Do you think he was hit with a sausage fruit?”
He nodded. “Sausage fruit.”
“It didn’t look like a sausage fruit.”
“Sausage fruit.”
Oh, dear. “Yes. I saw the sausage fruit on the ground. But Daniel’s head did not look like it was hit with a sausage fruit. Daniel’s head was cut open. Like it was hit with something sharp.”
“Sausage fruit.”
“Sausage fruit is not sharp. He was hit with something sharp. So he was not hit with a sausage fruit.”
I could see his mind whirling as he tried to process the English. Finally he nodded. “Sausage fruit.”
Clemson was finishing up his conversation. I managed to head him off. “So what’s going to happen to Daniel?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is a doctor going to see him?”
“That will do no good.
”
“To pronounce him dead. Fill out a death certificate.”
“Oh.”
“Will they do that?”
“I’m sure they will.”
That’s what I expected him to say. It’s the kind of answer that freely translated means I have no idea. I might have posed a follow-up, but having delivered that equivocal assessment, Clemson moved on.
I might have tried John, but he was busy reassuring Daniel’s replacement that the position wasn’t necessarily a dead-end job.
“Leave her alone!”
It was an indignant, bordering-on-hysterical shriek. I didn’t have to guess who that was. I looked up. So did everyone else in camp.
Lolita’s mother had imposed herself between her daughter and Keith like an avenging fury. Keith looked sheepishly amused, but Lolita looked murderous.
Bad choice of words.
15
REHASH
LUNCH WAS BACK IN CAMP. No one ate much. No one said much. Despite Clemson’s valiant attempt to carry on as if nothing had happened, we were all subdued.
After lunch, I paid tribute to the straight-drop toilet and went back to my tent.
Alice was waiting to pounce. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her alone, and she was ready to explode. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Daniel. What did Duke say?”
“Sausage fruit.”
“What did he say when you told him it wasn’t?”
“Sausage fruit.”
“Stanley.”
“Alice, there’s a language barrier. I told him Daniel’s wound was not consistent with being struck with a blunt object. He said sausage fruit. It’s hard to argue with that.”
“But—”
“I don’t know the camp staff, I don’t even know how many there are. I only know Daniel’s replacement because he was along on the walk. But the guys who set up camp and cook and bring the hot water, I have no idea.”
“So you’re not going to do anything?”
“There’s nothing to do.”
Alice said nothing, just looked at me.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“And yet you blame me for not doing it.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
Oh, dear. A familiar phrase, and one from which there was no escape. Alice said she wasn’t blaming me. Which meant she was blaming me. But since she said she wasn’t, there was nothing to push against. All I could do was sit there in the shame of my blame, and try to think my way out of it. In most cases, an impossible task. And yet our marriage endures.
Alice, having beaten me to a standstill, whipped out her iPad and began downloading pictures. I didn’t realize she’d taken any this morning. I wondered if they were of the crime scene. Realized that was ridiculous. Alice hadn’t even known it was a crime scene until I told her about the wound in his head. She’d thought he’d been hit by a sausage fruit, just like everybody else. No, these would be the pictures she took before we found him. I was glad she had. It was good she had something to occupy herself with. I wished I had some footage to look at, but I hadn’t shot a thing.
A shadow blotted out the sun. I looked up. Clemson stood in the tent opening. “Listen,” he said. “About Daniel.”
“Sausage fruit,” I said. I felt a bit of malicious glee at throwing their own game back at them.
Clemson wasn’t deflected. “You were asking about it.”
“Yes, and you said you didn’t know.”
“No, you were asking Duke. He said you were suggesting the boy’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“I merely said the gash on his head wasn’t consistent with being hit with a blunt object.”
“A blunt object like a sausage fruit.”
“Yes.”
“If he wasn’t hit with a sausage fruit, his death wasn’t an accident.”
“What are you implying?”
Clemson frowned. “I’m not implying anything. It’s what you’re implying.”
“Is that what Duke said?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“From what he said to me, I wouldn’t have known it.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Sausage fruit.”
Clemson took a breath. “Duke is not particularly communicative with the tourists. He talks to me.”
“Then you can discuss this with him.”
“I did.”
“And?”
Clemson stopped, took a breath. I could see his mind going, reminding himself I was a tourist. That telling me off was not in his best interests.
Alice, who had been restraining herself with an effort, couldn’t stand it anymore. “Oh, for goodness sakes. He’s a private investigator. He’s been involved in murder cases. He’s been around too many crime scenes to ignore a glaring inconsistency like this. The kid wasn’t hit with a sausage fruit. He knows it, you know it, I know it, Duke knows it. Stop acting like he’s made a major faux pas by pointing it out.”
Clemson opened his mouth, closed it again, smiled. “That’s very well put.”
“You wouldn’t want to argue with her,” I observed.
“All right, look,” Clemson said. “Here’s the situation. This is not New York. Duke is not a homicide detective. He’s a park ranger. The only homicide he ever solved was an ivory poacher shot to death in front of witnesses by a villager who bragged about it to anyone willing to listen. The Daniel situation is unfortunate. If Duke declares it a murder, he’s gotta investigate it. Which means giving up this plum assignment shepherding the hikes. He likes going on the hikes. He’s getting paid as a ranger, and he’s getting paid by me. He doesn’t have to do anything except carry a gun and look competent. He’s never shot anything. Not in all the time he’s worked for me. I don’t know if his gun’s even loaded.” Clemson realized he’d gone too far. “I’m kidding, of course. But this is a nice job, and he’s eager to do it. You think he wants to give all that up and start questioning people about a homicide? No one’s gonna talk to him if they know why he’s asking. Then when he can’t solve it, it’s an ugly unsolved crime hanging over his head and that of the other park rangers. But if it’s an accident, it’s a win-win. If it’s never solved, no one’s upset. But if the guy who did it is foolish enough to talk about it, wow. Duke can arrest him, and he’ll be a big hero, solving a murder case everyone thought was an accident.” He smiled ingratiatingly. “See what I mean?”
“I see what you mean, but—”
“Good. So if I can count on your discretion not to rile up the others. I doubt if any of them have had the same experience you have, and they’re not going to take it as well.”
“Of course not,” Alice said. “Well, thanks for explaining the situation.”
“No problem,” Clemson said. A curious choice of words. Clearly, it was a problem. “Can I count on your discretion?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him.
Clemson looked relieved. He nodded, bowed himself out of the tent.
The minute the flap closed, Alice turned to me. “Well, what are you going to do now?”
16
STAFF CAMP
I HEADED FOR THE STRAIGHT-DROP toilet, detoured around it, and headed into the bush. I had no idea what was out there behind the toilet. It might have been the tents of the camp crew, for all I knew. I had no idea where they hung out. As far as I could tell, it was just underbrush. I went in far enough so as not to be seen, then worked my way around to the trail.
At least that was my intention. The problem was, the trail wasn’t a trail. We’d been following some tracks in the dirt. That was a long time and many animals ago. When I did find some dirt, there’d be animal tracks in it, but were they the tracks I’d seen this morning, or other animals entirely? I had no idea.
Was I far enough around the camp? My intention was to travel in a huge semicircle. I weaved my way in and out
of bushes and around trees, at the same time avoiding a seemingly endless supply of elephant poop. I was really winging it. Of course I could take my bearings from the sun. Assuming I could remember where the sun had been this morning. And calculated how far it would have traveled by now. I forged my way through the underbrush looking for a familiar landmark.
I found one, but it didn’t help. I came walking into a clearing and a giraffe reared up in front me. I don’t mean on its hind legs like a stallion. It was just standing there, but it was damn high. I looked up and thought, oh, boy.
Clemson had not given us a primer on giraffes, probably because he never expected us to get this close to one. So what was the protocol? Did I say excuse me, and back deferentially into the bush? Probably, but I never got the chance. The giraffe turned and ran. Which looks great, by the way, a giraffe galloping on those long legs.
If the giraffe was going that way, I figured I should probably go the other way. I set off through the bush, being a little more careful about turning corners.
I don’t know how long I might have bumbled along looking for tracks in the dirt if I hadn’t happened to look up to see if I was bumping into a warthog, and seen the sausage-fruit tree. Of course it didn’t have to be the sausage-fruit tree. It was just a sausage-fruit tree. But by then I was happy to find anything.
I was embarrassed to discover that even after a careful perusal, I was unable to tell if it was the right tree. Of course the last time I was here, if it was indeed here, there had been that confusion of people and bodies and jeeps. I should have been able to find evidence of that, but I couldn’t, which didn’t bode well for my career as a tracker, if I couldn’t even find a damn jeep.
I searched all around the tree. It was only when I got to the side that I was sure it wasn’t, that it turned out it was. After that, it was short work to figure out where the body had lain. I even found the sausage fruit. It was a wonder some animal hadn’t come along and eaten it. I examined it for blood. Found none. The sausage fruit was bashed in. And the dent was in the bottom, which would have been hanging down, and would have been the part to strike someone if it had indeed had. It was easy to tell it was the bottom, because the vine from which it had hung was still attached. It had snapped about a foot from where it joined the fruit. All nice and kosher, as if that was the way it had happened. All of which seemed to support a theory of accidental death.
